


he breathes

by dissemble



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:09:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28760088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dissemble/pseuds/dissemble
Summary: Armin's life through a series of breaths.
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman & Armin Arlert & Eren Yeager
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	he breathes

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Suicide ideation (similar to what we see in canon) and spoilers up to chapter 136.
> 
> The end couple of scenes are best understood after having read chapters 134-136; I tried my best to convey the events portrayed in those chapters with what happened in the manga, while also adding Armin’s thoughts and such.
> 
> Not even sure if this can be categorized as a character study, but we're going with it.

The bullies have already rounded the street corner. Armin hears them laughing and talking jovially amongst themselves, words getting lost in the air of the marketplace as the distance between them gets larger. 

He focuses down at the cobblestone and reflects on what took place. It was Tuesday, the day Grandpa usually sent him off to buy the family’s bread for the week. Armin should have expected to get cornered; the neighborhood boys were well familiar with his schedule.

He wonders what they gained from waiting for him to cross this intersection—the bread he had been carrying was now on the ground, covered in dirt, and he had not had anything on his body that was worth enough time and energy to find through punches and kicks. 

Armin leans over and picks up the bread, bringing his cardigan up to scrub at the soil and rocks that damage the once fresh loaf. He works vigorously, and as he dirties his clothing in the process, he thinks of how he isn’t losing. How he stands up to those who look down on him by not moving, not giving in, not yelling, not crying in front of them. 

He can feel the tears landing on his hands, running down the backs of them, and soaking his clothing. He ignores them. Instead, he removes the fabric from the bread and stares at it, its surface still streaked with grime, yet not in terrible condition. He pockets the bread and stands up with no help. No leaning on the wall. No taking hold of two small palms, which would offer themselves for him to accept. No. He does it on his own.

Armin closes his eyes and breathes.

* * *

Armin tries to go over what happened in the last fifteen seconds without his lips quivering. A Titan—is that how they really look?—far larger than fifty meters had appeared in front of the Wall. A hole came after, accompanied by tons and tons of debris and screaming and crying and—

Armin turns when he hears Eren say something. He watches as he and Mikasa run off towards their house, ten-year-old legs carrying them faster than Armin had ever seen. _They’re going home,_ he thinks. _I should go too, I need to know if Grandpa is all right._

He doesn’t move. He looks down at his feet, at the way they are embedded in the soil, and thinks that maybe this is the last time he will stand in this city.

He’s taken from his thoughts as townspeople, neighbors and shop owners he had known for the past ten years of his life, push against him, all desperate to get to the river. Armin understands what’s happening, how he has to follow them and somehow make it onto one of the few safety ships they have. But first, he has to look after Eren and Mikasa, after months and months of them looking after him.

Armin closes his eyes and breathes resolutely, turning to find Mr. Hannes.

* * *

Armin knows what loss is. He has lost many things, despite living for such a short time. He has lost toys. He has lost books. He has lost his family’s food, on several occasions, but that really wasn’t his fault. He has lost his parents.

And now he has lost his grandfather.

Armin stays seated on the ground and continues to clutch his grandfather’s hat. He feels tears run down the side of his face, making streaks through the dust that surely covers it. He doesn’t wipe them away, choosing instead to concentrate on the feeling of coarse straw as it rubs against his fingertips and pierces his skin.

He takes a break in his sobbing when he hears Eren start to talk. He listens as Eren, standing next to him, rants on about how their lives will never be the same unless Titans are taken care of. 

Armin feels more than hears Eren sit down next to him, voice loud, clear, and strong as he declares his plans on going into military training. 

He looks down at the hat he had been holding, and he thinks about Eren’s words. He thinks of Eren’s want to see if the book they had once read holds true. He thinks of his parents, who probably died trying to see what type of life was beyond the Walls. He thinks of his grandfather, who always was there to brush his hair and read him a new story. 

He thinks of the ocean. And he makes his decision.

He, too, will sign up to be a cadet, he says. Mikasa voices that she will as well. Eren protests at that, warning them of how likely death is. Armin doesn’t care. Mikasa says she will be there to prevent them from dying.

They are going to move forward. Together.

Armin closes his eyes and breathes, and so do Mikasa and Eren. 

* * *

Armin has something new to add onto the list of things he has lost. Previously, there were small material items, things that didn’t really matter; then there were things that had hurt a little, like trinkets and books and bread; his parents and Grandpa were the most painful of the list. 

Now, Armin realizes as he goes to rendezvous with another squad, he has to add Eren to this ever growing list. The way Eren had caught him as he was sliding down that Titan’s throat, followed by his last words, play on a loop in Armin’s mind as he instinctually works his maneuvering gear.

Eren was strong. Strong enough to save Armin, even after having his leg bitten off. He was strong and he had so much perseverance and all Armin can think is that _he_ should have been in Eren’s place and _he_ should have been swallowed.

The thoughts only intensify when he gets to where other members of the 104th are. He pushes past them and makes his way to the corner of the roof of the building they are gathered on, ignoring any and all questions asked in his direction. 

He mulls over the questions, giving answers in his mind but not aloud. Are you all right? _No,_ Armin thinks, _I wish I was dead._ Where is the rest of your squad? _Eren is dead. He’s dead because of me and that’s all I’ve been thinking about. I haven’t even thought about the others. Mina. Thomas. Mylius. Nac. They’re dead and I didn’t even notice. It should have been me._

Armin sits down, slightly grateful that no one had bothered to come and keep him company. He stares at the shingles that make up the roof. He wonders how the family who slept under him lived. Did they have food? Did they have fun before this world went to hell? Did they have a blond-haired son? If they did, did he like to read? Did he have a friend like Eren? Did his friend die for him, when it should have been him instead? 

He remembers, offhandedly, that today is a Tuesday. A couple years back from today, he would have been getting cornered by the neighborhood boys. Armin thinks that they probably were right about him—about how he was weak and didn’t have any good qualities besides playing into his fantasy world. 

Every time those words have been slapped into him, Eren was there to soothe the bruises. And now he wasn’t. Because of him. 

He hears footsteps approaching him, the second of a set he would always be able to recognize. Its matching voice calls out to him, and it’s only then that it dawns on Armin that he will have to explain to Mikasa how he’s the reason why Eren’s not with them. 

She stands in front of him, no doubt looking down at him with concern, before she asks the question. With it in the air, there’s nothing more he can do.

Armin closes his eyes and breathes raggedly, voice brokenly explaining what happened.

* * *

The handles of his blades are molding with the skin of his palms. The clothing he is wearing is burned off, exposing his skin to even more of the incredible heat that comes off of the Colossal Titan. 

Armin has done all that he could for the Survey Corps. This is all he has left to offer, and even then, it doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice to him.

His hands are slowly losing grip on his gear. He doesn’t know if he’s really feeling any more of the pain. He focuses the last of what remains of his life on leaving his dreams and aspirations to Eren. Armin will never reach the ocean, but he hopes that Eren will remember him when he does. 

His eyes are already closed when he takes what he believes is his last breath.

* * *

Armin has a lot to think about; everyone does. Courtesy of Dr. Jaeger’s journals, they are now aware of the fact that humanity exists beyond their own three Walls. Now, their shoulders are heavier with what lays in the future for their people.

But now, for the first time in a while, is not the time to strategize. 

Armin dazedly takes off his boots and socks, tripping over his feet as his eyes stay locked onto an image that had forever been black and white to him. 

It’s so blue. 

Armin steps forward and feels the ocean for the first time. The water is cold. A good cold. The type that refreshes after hours and hours of thirst and heat and years and years of wanting and dreaming. Along with it comes graininess, from the sand and the broken shells that had found a home in it. 

He goes in deeper and feels something graze his foot. Looking down, his eyes focus on a diffracted seashell.

A gasp leaves him as he bends to pick up the shell—a conch, he remembers from his readings. His fingers rub around its ridges, tracing the patterns that have been imprinted on the shell for hundreds of thousands of years. 

Armin brings the conch to his face and makes the mistake of smelling it. He brings up his hand to rub at his nose and continues to examine the object. He looks through the conch’s aperture, slightly disappointed at not finding anything hidden in there. Finally, Armin presses the lips of the conch against his ear.

_Oh._

Everything around him goes silent. No longer does he hear Sasha and Connie splashing Jean, or Commander exclaiming about a different specimen than the one nestled in his hands.

Armin watches the waves of the ocean oscillate as they somehow speak quiet noises in his ear through the conch. Gentle hums and murmurs droning on, whispering _welcome_ and _we’ve been waiting for you._

As he focuses on the ocean’s greetings, he reflects on all he has gone through to get to this dream, this sight. He thinks of the years and years of fantasizing. The months and months of training. The days and days of being scared of what would happen to him and his friends. He thinks of his parents. His grandfather. Mikasa. Eren.

Armin closes his eyes and breathes in the salty air. 

* * *

Eren has them seated around a table with their hands atop and nonthreatening. Armin watches as blood runs down Eren’s own palm, a threat he had never thought would be aimed towards him and Mikasa making itself loudly known through its quiet _drip drip drip_ onto the table. 

Armin warily looks around the room. A cabinet houses wine and its accompanying glasses. Several other tables and chairs are set up in the room, looking as if they are eagerly awaiting guests; he wonders if they’ll ever see one like the man sitting across from him. The walls are empty with the exception of a calendar. The day is Tuesday. 

Armin is the first to speak. His voice, directed at Eren, sounds forced. Strangled. Unlike how it should be when talking to someone who practically makes up your other half. Eren responds coldly. If he feels the same disconnect that Armin does, he doesn’t show it.

He’s always been good at understanding Eren, was always able to know what he was thinking, how he was feeling, how to get him out of his own mind. He must have lost that ability, he thinks, as Eren barrages on about his freedom and volition, pausing to answer any questions asked his way in a sniping manner.

He remembers, briefly, the day of his grandfather’s reported death, how Eren had sat next to him and repeated synonyms of what he now says. Back then, they were encouragements; now, they were excuses. Armin wonders what he did to lose that boy. 

An angry demand brings his attention back to the present, one where Mikasa is teary eyed and Eren looks to be the reason behind it. He hasn’t even had the chance to lift a hand to comfort her when Eren starts speaking again, this time to him.

Armin is familiar with most of the words Eren spits at him. Influenced. Soft. Controlled. _Useless._ He knows all of that. He knows that he embodies those words perfectly, particularly that last one, and how he is a hindrance to them. He’s berated himself in the mirror with words much harsher than anything Eren could think to come up with. It shouldn’t hurt.

It does. To have his self-doubt and loathing reinforced by the one person who had always reassured him of his worth and had always stood up for him. It _hurts,_ so much more than anything he could have said about himself. Nine-year-old Eren had calmed him after neighborhood bullies would call him ugly words; nineteen-year-old Eren was now the brain and mouth behind them. 

Armin sits frozen as Mikasa tries to defend him, mind looping phrases that have a strength ten times his own. Eren doesn’t appear to stop. His focus turns to her, and Armin can all but listen as Eren tears into her as easily as ripping a worn, red cloth. 

_Mikasa doesn’t deserve this_ is all Armin can think. It’s one thing for Eren to vocalize what most people already assume of him, things he himself is already aware of. But Mikasa—Mikasa is strong and smart and she’s saved them so many times, she’s—

“—a slave.”

At that, Armin yells at Eren. Eren keeps going. He keeps going and going and maybe it’s that connection Armin once had with Eren, the one where he knew what the other was thinking, because he senses Eren preparing to say something that would break Mikasa’s world. 

The sentence comes out, and Armin doesn’t have the patience to close his eyes and breathe.

Anger breaks through in the form of a lunge, punch, and scream. 

* * *

Armin sits at the rotting desk in the jail cell, staring at the calendar atop it. The label _Tuesday,_ resting above that day’s date, taunts him. 

As a child, Tuesdays were when boys would hit and kick him for his bread; Eren was always there to dress and kiss his cuts and bruises. As a cadet, Tuesdays were for long-distance training, his least favorite regime; Eren was always there to give him tips, despite not being the best himself. As a Scout, Tuesdays wear for strategy meetings where higher-ups had looked at him disdainfully, the seat at the head of the table loudly empty; Eren was always there to remind him of his importance. 

Armin grabs the calendar and rips it. Gasped curses fall from his throat as he tears pages from their binding. He exhausts himself quickly and slumps forward onto the desk, torn paper clinging to his wet face. A hand makes its way into his hair, Mikasa’s cold fingers instantly recognizable to Armin. He turns towards her and presses his head against her stomach, bringing his hands to wrap around her waist. She reciprocates his hug and her hand trails down to his face; her thumb rubs against a cut on his cheekbone, healing itself instead of being bandaged by the hands of another boy. 

She squeezes him and he lets it out.

Armin closes his and breathes out sobs as if they were exhales. 

* * *

Wind shouldn’t be this loud. It's meant to be gentle, to breeze through hair and tickle skin. To breathe life into a body. Instead, it roars. It acts as an aggressor, a caller of war, as it carries the cries of hundreds and hundreds of people being tread into the Earth. 

He forces open the plug door after relaying instructions over the intense noise. He looks back, briefly, at the people he had grown up with, fought with, killed with. He hopes they will live. He knows not to expect much.

He hears a command come from behind him. _Fly._

Armin spreads his wings and jumps out of the plane, a familiar name on his lips, and with it, a declaration of war.

No time to breathe. 

* * *

Armin feels as though he is back in Trost, sliding down that bearded Titan’s tongue. This time, the tongue is wrapped around him and pushing into his mouth.

 _Of course_ , Armin thinks. _Of course I got distracted and was careless enough to get kidnapped._ _Useless, worthless, stupid stupid stupid._

His thoughts are loud, but their fuel is louder, stronger—Armin can still hear the screams coming from outside the Titan’s mouth. The Alliance or civilians? He doesn’t want to know. 

It hurts hurts hurts, everyone is fighting outside and he got captured it hurts it hurts how could he let this happen it’s getting dark why is it turning dark who is that in front of him why is there a man in front of him Bertholdt? Help me get up get up please wake up they need you please— 

His eyes close against his will. Everything is black. Armin can’t breathe.

* * *

Armin looks down at what he has drawn. It depicted his end, and that was how it was supposed to be. Another battle, another sacrifice. The admission still doesn’t come easily, but Armin’s proud of himself. He did what he could. He followed in the footsteps of the commanders before him and gave his life for humanity’s benefit. 

The sand surrounding Paths makes for a nice companion. The first time he had visited, he had not had time to focus on the feel of it in his hands. Now, he is accustomed to it; it's much warmer than what he had first expected. It also makes for a beautiful canvas. 

His fingertips move delicately through the sand and carve out the last couple of details of his final moments on the physical plane. He speaks the events into the air, talking to an invisible audience. He recounts, with his hands and voice, the moments before he had come in contact with the Founding Titan. Armin finishes outlining his hand around the Founding Titan’s nape, an action that had sent him to where he is now. Trapped.

Armin pulls his hand back from the sand and stares at what he has drawn. With this final memory etched into the sand, he’s finished with it. All of it. 

He looks up from this one moment of his life to take in all the others. Every important memory he had remembered had been immortalized within the sand of his now-home. Across all of Paths, as far as he could see, were images of his life, carefully illustrated to pass time and as an act of remembrance. 

His life, a series of events, drawn in sand.

Armin gets up and starts walking to where he remembers the first memory to have been drawn, one which features two little boys and an illegal book. It takes him a while to find it; so much has happened within his nineteen years of life. When he does, he smiles. It’s still one of his favorite memories to retell, one of dull skies and secretive voices and detailed exclamations of _fire water, land made of ice, fields of sand!_

It’s a little bit faded, due to the passage of time. Armin doesn’t mind. He lovingly retraces what remains of the lines until the full image is clear to see. 

He takes a breath and starts his narration from the beginning. His eyes are open.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! This was kinda nerve-wracking.
> 
> Just a few notes! For the scene after the chapter 112 fight, I’m sorry if it seems as though I made Armin reliant (?) on Eren. That wasn’t my intention; as an Armin stan, I believe he does well without E+M, but I really wanted to convey how the 112 fight could have impacted Armin, especially because we saw all his self-hatred vocalized in 136.
> 
> The last scene is one of my “theories” for Armin’s end in the manga and it’s kinda my favorite thing I’ve come up with, in relation to the end, despite the probability of it happening being extremely low.


End file.
